Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of the video. To protect the privacy of the individuals in this series, only first names were used.

In my old neighborhood, you can hear the swings when the wind is blowing.

I would hear the sirens going past late at night.

You can literally go down for blocks and see abandoned buildings, vacant lots lined with churches.

There would be young men on the back deck. That always made me feel really concerned, like getting in and out of my car. Are they watching when I leave and when I come back?

It’s not like the young men I see standing on the bus stop, catching the bus to school or in their football uniforms. I’m like, “that’s going to be my young boy, my son.”

I was just so shocked when I saw him, with his little hands and his head full of hair. But I knew that reality was now in full effect.

This is it. Now, let’s start getting to work.

I read about raising successful black boys. Keep them busy. Know their friends. Feed them well. You know, be a two-parent family home.

I’ve asked a lot of — a lot of — single mothers whom I knew: How do they raise successful black boys? They gave me the same advice: Keep him busy, know his friends, and surround him with good examples.

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Conception is a six-part video series on what it’s like to parent in 2018.

I never like to talk of the things that I’m afraid of for him. I really only like to talk about the things that it is that I want for him. I want him to be free, to be himself, to walk down the street and not be stopped and frisked or to be shot. And I don’t know what I can do to prevent that.

I don’t want to teach him these black codes.

I feel like I’m up against systems that are in place to be oppressive to black boys, to black people.

A lack of opportunity and resources for these young children to be maneuvered into so that then, their worldview and their perspective is broader than the four-block radius of where they grew up.

He’s 1 year old right now, so he has, at least maybe, until he’s 8 — 7 — before someone sees him as a big, black boy.

I read to him every night.

The day I brought him home from the hospital, I was reading to him. His room is full of colors. It engages their mind and vision.

And I got the whole thing, quote unquote, “planned out.”

I hope when people see my son, they, they see a young man who is about something, who is doing something with his life. I want them to be able to see him and pass him easily. They’re not fearing him, but they feel, you know, safe, and that he’s just another young boy. And that is how I wish that society would look at all of our young boys.

I have this one vision, but he’ll be even better than that.

I believe that.

I hope for that.

Margaret Cheatham Williams is a visual journalist and editor. She is particularly interested in stories that examine the intersection of health, family and personal identity. @mcheathamw